


to hold the breeze

by purplecrescent



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Aang (Avatar)-centric, Air Nomad Genocide (Avatar), Air Nomads (Avatar), Gen, and how everyone loves and cherishes him, how aang wears culture on his skin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-07
Updated: 2020-09-07
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:34:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,465
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26327944
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/purplecrescent/pseuds/purplecrescent
Summary: She might not be able to see Aang’s tattoos, but she knows what they mean. And not just about the flighty bending either. What they mean about him, about his people. That he walks the most gracefully, sometimes barely touching the ground. She thinks it must be how they lived too.-tiny vignettes about aang's tattoos, his culture, and those who love him
Relationships: Aang & Appa (Avatar), Aang & Gyatso (Avatar), Aang & Hakoda (Avatar), Aang & Iroh (Avatar), Aang & Katara (Avatar), Aang & Kuzon (Avatar), Aang & Sokka (Avatar), Aang & The Gaang (Avatar), Aang & Toph Beifong, Aang & Zuko (Avatar), Aang/Katara (Avatar)
Comments: 45
Kudos: 310





	to hold the breeze

On the day of Aang’s tattooing ceremony, delicious orange sunlight seeps slowly through the windows, through the stone.

Gyatso gets him up early, his twelve year old body tumbling out of bed with excitement, and Gyatso clutching his hand and smiling wistfully, the two of them walking down the halls before anyone else is awake, Aang chatting all the way.

There is beauty to this private moment held between them. A moment where Aang is still just a boy, the morning just a morning.

Bands of dust float in front of them, visible only in the sun, there and gone and there again as their bodies pass through.

* * *

Appa still recognizes him immediately.

Running up to Aang when he finally sees him again, days later, tackling him to the ground and growling with excitement.

“Look buddy,” Aang laughs, running his hands over Appa’s soft arrow, his fur, the bone underneath. “Now we match!”

Appa rumbles his assent, warm and close.

Licking him all over.

* * *

"Wow!" Jamphel breathes as Aang's air scooter dissipates. "No wonder you got your tattoos early, Aang! That was so cool!"

He's flashing Aang a huge grin, his second tooth to the left still missing, his shirt slightly too wide around the collar.

Aang's voice is bright, easy, it has yet to be anything else.

"Don't worry, Jamphel, you'll get yours before you know it," he reassures, and Jamphel smiles at him like Aang holds the whole world in his hands.

Airbenders and bison fly around them, yellow tree leaves fluttering with their movement.

Jamphel leans in closer, almost vibrating with excitement. “Can you send me up, Aang?” He looks up at him with wide eyes. “Please?” 

Aang smiles wide and nods. "Of course!" And with a gust of wind Jamphel is hovering high above the ground laughing wildly, spinning himself like a wave underwater.

Jamphel is right, the tattoos are Aang’s first signifier of growing up. Of crossing the threshold that is both exciting and nebulous until you finally step through, the other side more like a new current than the shore.

But airbenders flow. They use the currents around them to carry, to catch. 

The tattoos are a reminder, that he is one of their own.

Aang is the last of the Southern Temple to get them.

* * *

Bison fur floats in thin streaks through the air and in clumps down the river as the kids wash and brush them, laughing and splashing each other when they get too hot.

Monks and nuns watch on from the shore, sitting in the cool dappled sunlight, their students brought together for the start of spring. Daylight shimmers on the bright water, orange flowers dancing in the breeze, green birds trilling and collecting white fur in their claws before flying away.

Aang waves to Gyatso with a huge lopsided grin as he jumps all the way over Appa, preparing to wash his other side.

"You're going to look so pretty this spring, Dawa," Tashi croons as she brushes another white lump off her bison's back. "She's going to look so pretty, isn't she Aang?" Tashi turns her head to him, her cheeks slightly pink.

Aang doesn't notice.

"She does look pretty great!" Aang replies brightly, leaning over to rub Dawa's wet face. She lets out a warm growl, nuzzling further into his hand, laying down into the river with a contented splash.

Tashi's blush furthers, she fiddles with her hands.

"Congratulations on your tattoos, by the way," she ventures, shyly meeting his eyes, her robes swinging as she leans forward. She is still years away from getting her own. 

"Thanks Tashi," Aang smiles at her. "I've heard you're a really great bender!"

Her stomach flips, and Dawa reaches her paw out to him again.

Three months later, Tashi is ecstatic, her temple is preparing a room for Avatar Aang.

* * *

"C'mon!" Kuzon pleads, throwing his head back. "Show me some of those famous airbending moves," he puts his arms in front of him, bouncing side to side like he's prepared for an attack.

There's a glint in his eyes as he continues. "Oh, powerful Master Aang," he lunges forward to hit Aang on the arm and he grins back. 

Spring in the Fire Nation smells impossibly like cherry blossoms everywhere you go, and faintly of meat frying in kitchens. The breeze carries it all, and backdoors open to let it in.

"What do you want to see, Kuzon?" Aang laughs.

They have already gotten kicked out of a restaurant today for letting a bird, one that was repeatedly throwing itself against the metal bars, out of its cage.

It had been a good deed.

But the following commotion it caused: flying into a man's hot angry face, and through a woman's tall wig, well that was definitely fun too. 

"How about sending me all the way up on the roof!" Kuzon suggests. "Or- or making me fly!" He practically jumps up and down, spreading his arms wide for emphasis.

Aang knows exactly what would make Kuzon laugh. The kind of story he would tell for years, insisting always, that it was the funniest thing of all time.

Kuzon is the kind of friend who holds onto your memories, your moments, as if they're all inherently precious. Kuzon is the kind of person who makes them.

And as his parents get stricter about his games, and the trouble he gets into, Aang always stays the same. Lighthearted, and full, and fun, warm.

Aang is a master bender now, moving up in his community, and yet he still jokes with him, he still pulls pranks, and gets into trouble. He never tells Kuzon he's talking too loudly, or too much. He's free. And with him, Kuzon's free too.

He holds onto the feeling with both hands.

"How about something like this!" Aang smiles, sending his arm forward, blowing Kuzon's shirt up and over his head. Kuzon grabs the hem, hastily pulling it back down before he starts laughing wildly in that way he does.

The sound starting in his stomach and working its way upwards, into the air.

* * *

The other kids didn't want to play with him as often once he got his tattoos.

And they especially don’t want to play with him now that he’s the Avatar.

But he still has Gyatso. And that's enough.

Aang sits on the balcony railing, running his fingers over the lines of his tattoo, body aching from training, the breeze smelling sweetly like wet grass.

Aang looks up, tilting his head, as a thought occurs to him. “Hey, Gyatso, who was at your tattooing ceremony?”

Gyatso looks over at Aang, so young and small and _good_ and he isn’t sure why at that exact moment, but he is struck with the feeling that he needs to sit down and cry.

He blinks. Clears his throat.

“Oh, well, the Elders of course, my friends,” Gyatso answers, he lists them on his fingers. Then smiles. “Even an old friend of mine from the Fire Nation.”

“Really?” Aang leans forward at that, turning to face him completely, one leg dangling over the railing’s edge.

“Yes,” Gyatso chuckles, and the sound travels all the way to Aang’s toes. “His hair kept blowing into my food.”

Aang laughs. A full wholehearted laugh. And he perks up again, sitting taller.

“Is it anyone I know?” He has been to the Fire Nation many times. When Kuzon saw him after his tattooing ceremony he told him he looked _fresh_ , he looked _flamin’_.

“One day, young one,” Gyatso says, eyes crinkling, patting him on the head. “I’ll introduce you.”

* * *

"Your tattoos are so pretty," Katara tells him. "They remind me of water." 

She runs her finger curiously across his hand and he blushes. The ground is cold beneath them, to the right Sokka grumbles as he tries to light the fire, tall whispy trees blow in the wind.

"I- um thanks," Aang stumbles, rubbing the back of his head with his free hand, his face heating further under her gaze.

She smiles as he flexes his fingers, running her thumb across the arrow as it moves. 

"Sorry," she releases him suddenly, realizing she's been holding onto him for too long.

”It's okay,” he reassures her, his smile somewhat shy as he places his hand back in his lap, his face glowing as Sokka lights the fire.

This is the first time. 

The first time he realizes that his body is now a relic, a piece of history and not a part of their present. 

That now, these tattoos that meant he had gained something, suddenly tell everyone how much he has lost.

But Aang isn't one to dwell too long on sadness. He can't. And at least, with these tattoos, he has one part of the Air Nomads he can never lose. He has to remember that with loss comes gain. Always.

Like now, he gets to wear a lot of fun hats. And new disguises, and workshop new characters. And hear Sokka practice different voices for each one. That's the best part. That Sokka and Katara never have him do it alone.

Every day they are in danger, every day more responsibility is put on their shoulders. And yet, he is the happiest he has been in a long long time. 

To anyone else it would be startling, to wake up and love this much.

But Aang does it as easy as breathing.

* * *

"You guys never want to do what I suggest," Katara complains, crossing her arms over her chest, she looks to Aang for back up. Toph props her foot on a rock, leaning back.

She can’t see his tattoos. But she knows they’re there.

Toph knows Aang through his graceful light footsteps, his steady heartbeat, his small hands and soft fingers that grab her and pull her along.

Aang may be air, but in many ways, he reminds her of a river stone. So battered and eroded by his environment that he, almost beyond logic, comes out smooth.

He is the one who laughs the most, and the sound reminds her of kids she’d hear passing her house at night, and how much she wished they could be laughing like that because of her, with her.

The sound makes her warm. Even though she’d never say it.

“Well,” Toph shrugs at Katara from the dusty ground, she rolls a gold piece between her fingers. “That’s because Aang’s _fun_.”

She might not be able to see Aang’s tattoos, but she knows what they _mean_. And not just about the flighty bending either.

What they mean about _him_ , about his people.

That he walks the most gracefully, sometimes barely touching the ground.

She thinks it must be how they lived too.

* * *

In a dream Aang sees Gyatso again.

He is standing on the top of a mountain, a green valley between them. 

_They still burned me,_ _Gyatso_. Aang speaks like he’s choking on ash. _I wasn’t there and the Fire Nation still burned me._

Black snow is falling around them and Gyatso is getting harder and harder to see and Aang stumbles forward, something grabbing him suddenly before he hurdles off the edge and into the valley below.

He hears Gyatso’s voice, and it is exactly like he remembers. _And yet you live, Aang. You’re alive._

Aang wakes up scarred.

And his tattoo, a mark of love, made by people who lived by nothing but peace, has been distorted by violence. 

He is aware that it is possibly the last thing done with their hands that still exists in the world. 

He wears it on his skin, a reminder of his identity, of their love.

Of that fall day, with all of their breath mingling in the room, and their steady hands. The way Gyatso had spoken to him, “Be with us right now, Aang. Do not let your pain take you away.”

* * *

"I've never met someone from the colonies before," On Ji tells him, walking out of the school yard, Aang to her right, Shoji on his other side. "You're really different from the people around here." 

Really, she's never met a boy like Kuzon before. A boy who is both confident and kind. A boy who avoids violence without shame.

"I don't know On Ji," Aang smiles at her, in that full way, the way where she sees his whole top row of teeth. It's disarming, impossible not to smile back. "I had a good friend from the homeland, we used to get in trouble together all the time."

The sun beats down harshly, almost glowing on a patch of wet pavement. Their classmates run around them, the school bell ringing in the distance.

She's about to ask him for his friend's name, but Shoji breaks in excitedly, turning to Aang with bright eyes. "Hey, Kuzon, watch this!" He yells, running forward and jumping into the air, touching the edge of a first floor roof.

On Ji laughs, surprised, she's never seen Shoji show off like this, for anyone. She's never seen him so confident, so happy.

"So like this?" On Ji asks, moving her feet side to side next to him, watching his movements.

"Exactly!" And he's smiling so wide it makes On Ji smile too, her arms moving without her thinking about it, everyone's feet pounding into the earth, vibrating the ground.

Girls giggling, and boys slowly starting to move beside them, one of the boys blushing red as Aang looks at him.

Aang’s covering his arrows but he is dancing and grinning and jumping maybe higher than he should but all he can think about is this moment and the other kids' faces as they join him.

He’s covering his arrows but it's worth it for one night of joy.

One night of living like an Air Nomad.

* * *

"Keep your arms straight! And no airbending over the obstacles!" Zuko yells at him, trying not to stare too long at Aang’s arms, his legs, definitely not the broken line down his back.

Before Aang, Zuko had only seen the markings in paintings in his school books. Images over text that told him how the Air Nation army had attacked his people, how their barbaric practices made them enemies of the world. 

Still, he loved the paintings. 

He loved the swoop and fall of the tattoos as they showed an Airbender standing tall, one with his back facing the viewer, another jumping, arm held high.

As he visited the Air Temples in his search, years later, he had looked at their skeletons and tried not to remember the smell of his own burning flesh.

He thinks about how all that skin is gone now. Aang’s is the only left with these tattoos.

Zuko watches Aang’s arms as he produces a flame stretching the length of the courtyard, and for just one moment the image makes him nauseous.

Fire coming from those arms.

He watches him bow, and then jump away laughing as Sokka starts talking to him about different types of _juice_ and he can’t believe that these are his friends now, that these are the people who used to beat him at every turn.

But instead of stinging, he's surprised when the realization fills him with warmth.

“You get a five minute break, Aang!” He yells after him. “Five minutes!”

But he still can’t look away. The blue lines twisting and racing around the yard. How he wishes so badly someone else’s skin wore them too.

He thinks of his textbooks. At least they didn’t lie about the arrows. 

At least somewhere, those are preserved.

“Hey Sparky!” Toph’s voice startles him and she grins. “Paint a picture would you? It’ll last longer.”

“I wasn’t-” Zuko snaps, getting cut off by Aang and Sokka's loud laughter. He sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose, and with his eyes closed he sees the images again. A woman in a long yellow robe, sitting in a field of grass, the top of her arrowed foot barely exposed.

And the lies written underneath.

Maybe one day Zuko will show Aang those paintings.

Just the paintings. 

He’ll burn the rest.

* * *

After the war, once they all _finally_ get the chance to go back to the Southern Air Temple, Sokka is bounding up the stairs to the overhang.

His eyes, his smile, his hair flying everywhere. The movement of his body, like a boat on water.

He's coming to look for Aang, who disappeared fifteen minutes ago. Zuko has brewed them all tea, and two generous cups wait stoically for them in the courtyard, pale yellow liquid cooling side by side.

But when Sokka reaches Aang he sees his shoulders slumped heavily, one knee held tightly against his chest. He's sitting on the balcony railing looking out over the valley below, the grass and weeds growing between the stones, the solitary lemur jumping from tree to tree. The broken pie oven filled with ash.

The last time he saw Aang like this was during their first visit to the temple, or maybe when they reached Ba Sing Se and still hadn’t found Appa.

Sokka walks up behind him, taking one of his hands in his own. It feels heavier than usual.

Aang turns his head and Sokka doesn’t need to ask. He already knows.

He steps closer, and his voice comes out barely above a whisper.

“The Air Nomads don’t blame you for what happened, Aang.”

Aang inhales sharply, then turns his head away. But Sokka puts his arm over his shoulders, and continues anyway, because he knows Aang isn’t going to respond.

Not if it’s to absolve himself.

“You want to know how I know?” Sokka questions, even though Aang didn’t ask. He shrugs halfheartedly.

Good enough for him.

“Because they’re your family, Aang. And you’re mine. And I know,” Sokka smiles at him then, squeezing him harder, and it cracks Aang open. “That I would never blame you for this.”

They watch the horizon together, the breeze suddenly, stronger than usual.

* * *

Katara doesn't realize she's been staring at first.

She doesn't realize she's been curiously tracing the tattoo on his arm for over a minute, studying its line, like the tattoo itself will tell her about his people. It's a strange sort of feeling, she thinks, that something so beautiful, in look and meaning, now holds so much grief, so much loss.

Aang notices and turns his head towards her.

Caught.

Immediately her face heats up and she looks away, embarrassed. Her hair falling over her shoulder, blocking her from his view.

"What?" she asks defensively.

"Sorry," he smiles at her, genuinely, kindly, and even though she's looking away she can hear it in his voice, feel its warmth reach her skin. "That just kind of tickled."

She looks up at him then, eyebrow slightly furrowed. "It did?"

There is a split second, right before he is about to respond, where he thinks she's going to give him an unnecessary apology. But then suddenly she's tickling him so hard he's throwing his head back, rolling to his side, Katara moving towards him, grinning.

He catches his breath. And then using his tattooed arms, he’s tickling her back.

* * *

"Mind if I join you?" Hakoda's voice startles him, even with the sound of the curtain preceding it.

Aang turns to watch him step inside. "Of course not, Chief Hakoda," he answers quickly, scooting over to make room for him, smiling warmly. "I - uh - I didn't know you meditated."

"I dont really," but he takes a seat next to Aang anyway, crossing his legs and placing his hands on his knees. "I've actually been meaning to talk to you."

Aang's eyebrows furrow. "Is something wrong?" And the question, the situation, reminds him so much of Gyatso it burns.

"No, nothing's wrong," Hakoda's voice is always even, always firm, always warm. It reminds him of how Sokka sometimes sounds, and how it always grounds him.

Aang's not sure who he sounds like.

But the South Pole always feels familiar. The way the community takes care of each other reminds him of home. It is almost otherworldly in its comfort, in its isolation. It is almost like his old world.

Aang turns towards him, his muscles sore from spending the day in a cramped canoe, Sokka casting light nets into the frigid water, pulling them back up filled with silver fish.

The moon here is always impossibly bright, and there always seems to be more stars than sky. Katara once told him that as a little girl, she'd reach up and try to catch some in her hands, her mother telling her they tasted like salt candy.

Hakoda is quiet for a moment, looking into the fire. "My mother used to tell stories of your people, you know," he suddenly tells him, and Aang tilts his head slightly.

"The stories were passed down to her, of course. But she talked about people of the wind, how they could float over tree branches, and make scent move. How they had all these twisting tattoos," Hakoda looks from Aang's face to his arrows, then smiles, shaking his head softly. "I guess I always thought they were just stories." 

Aang touches the tattoo on his right arm, waiting, watching, as Hakoda continues.

"In our tribe, storytelling is how we interact with our history, our culture. We keep our loved ones alive by talking about them. And I know from stories that being free, and fun is a large part of your culture," Hakoda looks to Aang for confirmation and charges on once he nods.

"After Kya died, I didn't think I would ever get Sokka and Katara back, not like they were before, anyway," he rings his hands together.

"They used to," Hakoda cuts himself off with a chuckle, running his hand through his hair. "They used to play all the time. Snowball fights in the house, escaping to penguin sled and thinking we wouldn't know where they were," he trails off, and Aang has turned to face him completely, even as Hakoda focuses on the fire.

"I just wanted to thank you, Aang, for bringing them back," he swallows, and with the fire's orange light Aang can see his eyes growing glassy. "And that I'm glad they weren't just stories."

* * *

Katara reaches her arm around Aang and presses her palm over his scar.

The skin has hardened in the six years since it happened. But she still knows it so well.

She could find it in the dark, with her eyes closed, first try.

* * *

Aang and Katara had talked about it once before, but he had ended the conversation prematurely. He never wanted her to feel like he blamed her, like he wished she could have healed it better. 

He doesn't. She saved his life.

She still does.

“The tattoo still wouldn’t be complete anyway, even if the skin grew back,” he had told her that night, their legs tangled together under the blanket, the window leaking moonlight onto their bed. 

She had traced the arrow on his head with her finger, nodding, trying to hold back tears. 

He didn’t say _No one is alive who could redo it._

And she didn’t say she knew that’s what he meant.

* * *

Iroh sits across from him at the pai sho board, rain tinkling against the Jasmine Dragon's roof, the air thick with the smell of tea, and bread. The soft sure clink of cups being placed on tables.

"I would be honored to hear more about your people if you ever care to share," Iroh broaches, placing the white lotus tile on the board. "It is not every day one can sit down with such a keeper of knowledge."

Aang smiles, moving his first piece onto the board. "What do you want to know?"

"Well," Iroh starts, pleased and chuckling. "I have heard you have great connections with the spirit world."

* * *

Aang and Katara are laying on the beach, legs spread out in front of them, his head on against her side, her hand on his neck. 

The waves push and pull against the shore, small insects and pink crabs burrowing into the sand, no clouds in sight.

Toph sits on a rock to their left and splashes water into Sokka's mouth, and he is yelling and gagging and Suki is laughing and laughing and even Zuko is smiling and everything seems to be humming with life.

Everything.

Aang sweeps his hand up Katara's stomach, arrow pointing to her belly button. And it happens.

His mouth opens as his face splits into a grin and he looks up at her.

“Can you feel it?” She asks him, even though she already knows the answer, the baby kicking again and again against his father’s hand.

“Yeah,” Aang’s voice is thick, he presses his palm more firmly against her.

He imagines holding this tiny life in his arms, how the baby will recognize him in a crowd from a flash of blue, a laugh that carries through the breeze. This baby that will be so small and soft and _theirs_.

He wants so badly for this baby to meet the people surrounding him right now. He wants him to be like all of them.

Aang’s heart suddenly feels like a bird in a cage, like he can't possibly hold it in.

“Yes," he repeats. "I can feel it.”

* * *

Katara touches his scar again. The line that is meant to be complete, now fractured, disconnected.

Every day, lines painted by Airbenders wrap around her, holding her safely. Thousands of lives, and years of love, live on through them. 

She imagines how they all looked, twisting in the air together, arrows pointed towards the sun. She imagines what it looked like when they held each other, if the lines on one's arms flowed seamlessly into the lines on the other’s. 

Connected.

Whole.

* * *

Sometimes, when Aang thinks really hard, he can remember how the air smelled that day, and how the Elders had helped him to his feet at the end.

He can feel their hands, skin over flesh over bone, steadying him, leading him down the path, loving him, as his skin absorbed their work.

He can hear their voices almost like an echo, kids laughing like the sound is trapped inside him.

No one has written it into her skin, like they have onto his, but hers is still heavy with it. He whispers against her forehead, adding more weight. “I love you, Katara.” 

He whispers it for all of those who can’t hear. But told him over and over again. Sowed it into him and gave him no choice but to wear it. 

He doesn’t want a choice.

He wants to tell them, over and over again. 

_I love you, too._

He’d use all his breath on it.


End file.
